A gym, where I was once a member, had a lovely sign exhorting all customers to sit on a towel in the sauna because 'it is not fair to expect others to sit in your melted fat.' If only it were so simple!
I have been doing some maths. For someone of my weight (no, I'm not saying because ladies don't) running at 7.8kph 668 calories are used up in one hour. This I find extraordinary as compared to the 293 cals used when I walk at 5.8kph. I discovered this today as I alternated between the two on the treadmill at the gym. This means that by simply notching it up by 2kph I can DOUBLE the amount of calories expended. Anyway, to extrapolate further... hmm I can't without making the maths a bit simpler. Let's say that 8kph burns 700 calories and that a marathon is 40k, that would mean that, with a constant speed of 8kph, a marathon would take me five hours (in my dreams) and burn up 3500 calories which would mean I would lose a total of ONE POUND (I was brought up imperial) in weight! This is depressing. I am never likely to run a marathon, but I guess that all the training for it would burn up a load more calories and lead to several more pounds in weight loss? Providing food intake remains roughly the same. It seems it would just be easier, and less effort, not to eat that piece of cake or bar of chocolate, but that would be missing several points, I suppose.
The points, my extremely un-scientific mind guesses, are that running (even quite slowly) raises the metabolic rate so that more energy is burned and builds muscle so that even more energy is burned. Not to mention the advantages of added cardio-vascular fitness and the health benefits that go with this and weight loss. Last night, I found myself lying in bed in my sheep onesie, contemplating a plank for a Janathon photo and googling 'running for the elderly' on my 'phablet'. Time and again I read about weight loss, indeed weight plummeting, from about four weeks in. I am more than excited at this prospect. At the moment, I do not eat between meals and I do not have puddings as a matter of course, but I still find it hard to control my weight. I am envious of friends who post on Facebook about puddings and afternoon teas, yet don't seem to gain weight. It's just not fair. Maybe they are secret runners? I know it's early days, but I have some goals now. One is to lose about 20 pounds through running and sensible eating over the next four months. The other, well it's a fantasy really, is that I will have to eat cakes almost daily in order to maintain my new low weight once I am running regularly and properly.
Today's exercise. The week Four Couch Potato to 5k drill, which was a total of 16 minutes running and 12 minutes brisk walking and a cool down, followed by three sets of 20 on shoulder press, upright rowing and something else that was for arms that I didn't notice the name for, largely because (I discovered later) I had sat on it back to front! Then I did 40 minutes brisk walking to town and back to collect my new spectacles.
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